【Zhou Xiang】The Tropic

1.

It was refreshing for a while, but the embarrassment lasted for a long time.

As the number in the elevator slowly decreased from 18 to 1, Sun Xiang frequently sneaked glances at Zhou Zekai from the corner of his eye.

This friend has not spoken since getting off the car, and now he is standing a foot away from him, with a tall and elegant figure, calm and dignified, as if the elevator he is about to board is not leading to his home, but a high-end forum summit site, In short, they are out of tune with themselves.Sun Xiang regretted the invitation just now - he couldn't see Zhou Zekai's face from his angle, he just felt that he was much more relaxed than his master, but it made him a little silly trying to start the conversation.

But no matter what, the elevator hall on the first floor could barely be called an open space. After they were stuffed into the temporarily closed space, Sun Xiang was almost at the breaking point, feeling that if he didn't say anything, he would burst out of embarrassment.

"Zhou Zekai, you are so lucky." Sun Xiang stared at the elevator numbers and said, "I just remembered that the refrigerator at home is full of specialties that just arrived from Chongqing, both spicy and non-spicy, and you can bring back some of them later. .”

"Thank you," Zhou Zekai politely did not refuse, "I don't eat spicy food. I'll ask for something less spicy."

The topic ended quickly, after which they fell silent again.Fortunately, it didn't take long for the elevator to ding, indicating that they had reached the target floor.

Sun Xiang heaved a sigh of relief, quickly pressed the door button, turned sideways and made a polite gesture of a gentleman: "The "01" on the left. You were here last time, remember?"

2.

After entering the door, Sun Xiang first smiled awkwardly at the bag in the entrance: "I put it here on purpose so as not to forget it, but in the end I still forgot it."

"It's okay." Zhou Zekai said, "Put it here, I remember."

"Well, then don't forget about it later," Sun Xiang said as he changed his shoes first, and was about to remind Zhou Zekai that the spare slippers were in the hidden cabinet in the entrance, but he saw that the cabinet door had been skillfully opened, and the upper The pair that was worn back was taken out accurately.

Sun Xiang gave a thumbs up in surprise: "Good memory."

After changing into slippers and hanging up their coats, the two walked into the living room together. "Sit casually, I'll go later—" Sun Xiang was speaking halfway, when he suddenly noticed that Zhou Zekai's eyes once again fell on the corner of the living room... on the "Ten Years of Glory" certificate.

"Oh, this can be taken off," Sun Xiang strode over, knelt on one knee on the sofa, leaned over and pulled the buckle, "That's it."

With a slight "click", the framed certificate fell into Sun Xiang's hands.

"Look at it casually, you can take it out, anyway, it's an enlarged copy, so it won't be damaged." He casually handed the thing to Zhou Zekai, "What do you want, tea or a drink?"

Zhou Zekai didn't expect that Sun Xiang would hand over the things directly to him, his expression fluctuated for a moment, and he immediately regained his composure.He sat down on the sofa, carefully placed the things flat on the coffee table, and then answered Sun Xiang: "Plain water is fine."

3.

It took about half a minute for Sun Xiang to return to the living room with warm water and a can of Coke.He thought that there were not many words on the certificate, so he could just glance at it casually, but he didn't expect that when he came back, Zhou Zekai was still looking at his certificate, which made him a little puzzled.

"Is it interesting? So serious." Sun Xiang put the water glass on the tea table, "Here, your water."

"Thank you." Zhou Zekai picked up the cup, took a sip, put it down and asked, "Is this alone or—"

"Or can everyone who has played for ten years get it?" Sun Xiang instantly understood, "It's the latter! Yu Wenzhou made it after he took office. Tsk, although the pattern is a bit ugly, the handwriting written by him is not very good It’s the same, but it’s really meaningful. Oh yes, you can only get it after ten years of service, do you remember Tang Hao? It’s just the guy in the seventh period, who has nothing to do and pretends to be a force, and he has been in the national team?”

Zhou Zekai nodded: "Of course. What happened to him?"

Sun Xiang seemed to be recalling something particularly interesting, his eyes were stained with a smile, and his eyebrows were raised high: "He retired a year earlier than me, and Yu Wenzhou awarded him a nine-year commemorative certificate. Ten to nine. Haha! He first retired After posting the picture, I will post it again, this guy was so angry that he silently turned the picture to be invisible to me, he is so grown up, and he still lives like a sophomore."

Zhou Zekai silently glanced at Sun Xiang, but Sun Xiang didn't notice.

He was still in high spirits, and while talking, he lifted up the certificate and looked at the light. "Shanghai has been severely smoggy for the past two years, and dust will still fall when you turn on the air purifier," he wiped off the dust on the mirror with his fingertips, continuing the topic just now, "If you are angry, you will be angry, anyway, I am a little older than him." The year is an ironclad fact. Hey, Zhou Zekai, do you know that when I first entered the league, I always wanted to line up the championship trophies in the living room after I retired to show off to all the visitors, but when it came time to retire, the only one I wanted to put in the living room was, But it turned out to be this certificate, which to me is like the ten-year achievement award that Lin Xi and Faye Wong get, it is very, very precious."

"Yes." Zhou Zekai replied, "It is very precious."

"Yes, as soon as I see it, all kinds of memories, as long as they are related to Glory, can be recalled. It is placed here to tell myself, to tell everyone, that this guy Sun Xiang is really working hard in Glory. After such a long time, I have experienced both good and bad things, and I have no regrets. Uh..."

Inadvertently looking at Zhou Zekai's dark eyes, Sun Xiang suddenly shut his mouth.It was at this time that he noticed that he had unconsciously raised his volume due to mood swings, and he couldn't help feeling annoyed.

He is no longer a fledgling young player, he has grown up in ten years, enough to understand a little air.Thinking that the person next to him was not someone else, but his former partner who retired earlier than himself, and if he persisted, his grades would definitely be as good as his former partner, he suddenly didn't dare to continue thinking about what kind of mood Zhou Zekai used to listen to his bragging just now.

Sun Xiang's way of thinking is simple and straightforward: If you make a mistake, make up for it quickly.

He struggled for a while, and stood up: "Why don't you go to the study? It's where you stayed for one night last time. It contains the trophies and awards we won back then, and I specially kept them in the display cabinet!"

4.

After he brought Zhou Zekai over there, feeling a little bit embarrassed, he picked up an excuse of cutting fruit and packing souvenirs and hurriedly slipped away.

After a while, Sun Xiang, who was absent-minded in the kitchen, realized that it was not good to leave the guests alone in the study, so he moved back silently.

To his surprise, Zhou Zekai was more comfortable spending time in the study alone than he thought.This guy leaned against the window sill, letting the warm afternoon sun fall on him and the book.The whole picture is soft and comfortable, exuding a sense of tranquility of time.Sun Xiang's hanging heart slowly let go, but his eyes froze the moment he caught sight of Zhou Zekai holding the spine of the book.

"What are you looking at?" With a bad feeling in his heart, Sun Xiang walked over in three steps at a time.A few big gilt characters on the spine of the book immediately came into view - "The Tenth Season Commemorative Book".

Sun Xiang yelled inwardly, and then poked his head to look at it. He was afraid that something would happen. The page that Zhou Zekai was studying with great interest at this moment was the tragic destruction that was wiped out by Du Ming and Wu Qi with a few cakes on his birthday night. black history.

"Cough!" Sun Xiang coughed to divert Zhou Zekai's attention, and the moment the other party raised his head, he snatched the souvenir book and held it in his arms.

Zhou Zekai was silent: "Can't you see?"

Ask knowingly!Sun Xiang thought.

The guilt and sympathy he felt towards Zhou Zekai just now dissipated in an instant, replaced by the emotion of "Zhou Zekai is still so annoying".He thought for a while, flipped the album to the last paragraph, and handed it to Zhou Zekai again: "You can only turn it backwards, the front is all black history, and yours, to be fair, I don't want to look at you, and you don't even want to look at me." Yes. Also, you just stared at my black history for so long, maybe you were laughing in your heart, forget it quickly! Forget everything!"

Who knew that Zhou Zekai thought for a few seconds after listening to his gangster-style speech, and then seriously replied: "No, I didn't laugh at you just now."

"Really?"

"Hmm. I was thinking about something."

"what's up?"

"You've always been blonde?"

"?!" Sun Xiang was stunned.

He was not usually surprised.

I was surprised that the answer to this question was so obvious—he didn't seem to have changed his hair color, yet Zhou Zekai was the first one to consciously ask him for so many years. What was even more surprising was that I really didn't know what to do for a while. answer.

5.

"You stump me." Sun Xiang said honestly, "Let me think about it."

"Yeah." Zhou Zekai signaled Sun Xiang to open the souvenir book, and pointed to one of them, "And..."

"Huh?" Sun Xiang looked over in bewilderment. It was a group photo. They were all in the reincarnation main election back then, and everyone was wearing team uniforms. There was nothing special about it.

"Du Ming, and your hair." Zhou Zekai explained, "He is also red today, but not the same."

Hey, Sun Xiang took a closer look at the words and suddenly realized.Although the opportunity to get in touch with Du Ming after retiring is not as good as before, he has met Du Ming one after another in the past two years. Looking back seriously, this guy's hair color does fluctuate in several different reds, sometimes it is dazzlingly bright, and sometimes it is darker. , and a little orange.

"So you actually want to ask, why is my hair color exactly the same as before?" Sun Xiang understood.

Zhou Zekai nodded, and put forward his own guess: "Keep it on purpose?"

"On purpose, not on purpose..." Sun Xiang's thinking had almost come to a conclusion, "Do you want to hear the truth or official words?"

Zhou Zekai said without hesitation, "Think about it all."

"Hahaha!" Sun Xiang didn't succeed in joking, but he wasn't depressed. Instead, he had a feeling of "it's true", "Well, the official word is, if someone asks me this question next time, I will tell him without hesitation. In order to speak for Boss Sun's e-sports career and attract fans, he needs to maintain a stable image."

"What about the truth?"

"The truth is—" Sun Xiang's eyes suddenly became serious. He looked at the glass of the display cabinet, saw his appearance in it, and slightly raised his lips, "Maybe this will remind me to keep my original intention." Don't forget yourself why enter the glory

It turned out that when Sun Xiang first made the decision to drop out of school and enter the youth training camp, he also encountered fierce opposition from his family.This beginning is not uncommon in the league. After all, even in the face of the prosperity and development of the e-sports industry, the mainstream society still holds the view of "playing things and losing one's ambition" when it comes to abandoning school to play games.

After a vigorous quarrel, "bamboo shoots fried meat" was also suffered. His parents suppressed Sun Xiang's registration form and locked him in the room to write the papers, thinking that he should give up now.Unexpectedly, that afternoon, this stubborn and smart young man would sneak out of the window on the second floor facing the balcony with the lucky money in his pocket, and successfully ran away from home.

"Run away from home to... dye your hair?" Zhou Zekai seemed to twitch the corner of his mouth, looking at him in surprise.

"I rely on you not to laugh!" Sun Xiang bit his lip in embarrassment, "That's right! It's just so weird!"

What he thought at the time was, aren't you grown-ups trying to stop me from "deviant"?OK, just because I can't play doesn't mean I can't do other cross-border behaviors to piss you off!

So he ran to the hairdressing shop near the neighboring community, and asked the adults who were tens of centimeters taller than him, "Help me dye the most awesome color, the more conspicuous the better!"

To this day, he vividly remembers how uncomfortable that old-fashioned steam mask was.It fixes its own head in a small, high-temperature space, and must remain motionless for more than three hours, which is not an ordinary hardship for lively and active adolescent boys.Fortunately, he was supported by the heroic sense of "doing great things", telling him that his patience is valuable.As it turns out, he literally wanted to scream when he first saw his blonde hair in the mirror right after it was done.

Then I went back to the community and mustered up the courage to knock on the door of the house.

It's a pity...the expected more violent scolding and mixed doubles did not happen.

"The beautiful girl is sitting at the table, holding a pen in her hand, staring at me with her chin resting, her expression is very gentle. My dad is standing with the same expression as her, it almost scares me to death!" Sun Xiang complained to Zhou Zekai, "I thought Definitely the calm before the storm!"

"Actually?" Zhou Zekai had already guessed the ending, but he still wanted to hear Sun Xiang finish.

"Actually... she had already signed with my dad!"

Seeing Sun Xiang's blond hair, Mama Sun didn't seem surprised at all, instead she beckoned him to get the application form.

"She asked me if I had made up my mind. When I was done, I would hand in the form. If I didn't do well, I would come back to study. In the end, I didn't forget to ask where I got my hair dyed..."

"Worried about your use of hair dye?" Zhou Zekai asked, intentionally or not, avoiding the main line of the story.

"Well, she took me to find the owner of the shop," Sun Xiang said, "Fortunately, they didn't think I was a minor and cheated on me. Later, we remembered the color number and started to be in the local area. My mother took me there. I dyed it in the store, but I was no longer in Chongqing, so I bought the same color number on Taobao and did it myself... If you don’t tell me, I would never have imagined that in the blink of an eye, I’d dyed the same color number for ten years.”

"Hehe," Zhou Zekai smiled noncommittally, closed the souvenir book and handed it to Sun Xiang, "But you won't change, right?"

When the eyes met, Zhou Zekai's eyes were calm and determined, which caused Sun Xiang to have an illusion, as if Zhou Zekai was not asking himself "You won't change your hair color", but "Your love for Glory, It will never change, right?"

He hesitated for a moment, and decided to act willfully as Zhou Zekai was asking the following questions—because the subsequent words were also what he wanted to say just now—"That's right," Sun Xiang said proudly, "I can't guarantee it now, but I will work hard to keep it from changing. After all, money is such a terrible thing—"

Sun Xiang turned to the desk, flipped through it a few times, and found a pile of things from the pile of documents, and handed them to Zhou Zekai.

"Financing plan?" Zhou Zekai saw the text on the cover, but didn't answer, "Round B?"

Sun Xiang hummed in a low voice, without the joy that should have existed in his tone: "After winning Yu Wenzhou's award, the valuation of Mercury in the capital market is like a rocket, which made me feel what it means to make a real leap forward."

Three months ago, the employer who ridiculed him sent a text message: "You have successfully proved your potential, please give me a chance to invest."

There are more, the emails that almost filled his and Zhao Yaoyao's mailboxes, the WeChat business cards sent by friends after several layers, and the strange phone calls that may be made all the time. It was a mess.

"During the A round, I paid 2000 million yuan and no one paid any attention to me. Now they just add zeros to the end. There are even more powerful intermediaries who contact me and say that they can help me integrate all the e-sports projects at hand, create a cluster concept, and do a few rounds of roadshows In the future, it may reach one billion."

"Then you refused." Zhou Zekai said affirmatively.

"Yeah." For a moment, Sun Xiang wanted to imitate Zhou Zekai's high-five like when he was off stage before, but he held back, shrugged his shoulders, and tossed aside the plan that symbolized sky-high money, "They said it very professionally, Minghua I went to a lawyer to see it, and it’s true that I didn’t cheat me too much, but I still think it’s wrong.”

"How to say?" Zhou Zekai stared at him.

"The focus is different. Look," Sun Xiang said, leaning over to pick up the two Nendoroids on the desk. "God Destroyer, the new Glory," he raised his left hand, "I definitely don't need to introduce this one," he shook his right hand, it was the old Glory Battle Mage.

"Yes, I recognize it." Even though it was unnecessary, Zhou Zekai responded cooperatively.

Sun Xiang smiled and said: "Look, you must recognize it, right. But those investors... They basically have no idea what Glory is. Knowing that it is a game that can be played online, and the server is set up in China, it is already quite good up!"

"But they can talk about statistics." Zhou Zekai seemed to laugh, a little mockingly.

Sun Xiang nodded his head: "Yes. And only they can get the data. The e-sports industry has grown rapidly in the past three years. What's the market value of [-] billion, the five major fields, and the size of the audience? money. But so what?"

"So what." He repeated, holding up the Nendoroid of the Battle Mage, and scrutinized it up to the light, his eyes focused as if he was looking at his lover: "If I am not firm, I will attract a bunch of investment people who don't understand glory." If people enter the arena and intervene in management, they will only mess up the team in the end."

"They are not afraid." Zhou Zekai analyzed calmly, "They will only ask you to sell them."

"Yes." Sun Xiang sneered, "Actually, they have even considered this point, and told me that if the management is not good, they will package the upstream and downstream, get the funds out, and then go public through a backdoor, turning them into concept stocks to deceive more investors. I don’t have to worry about picking up leeks at all, and I can travel around the world freely with my wealth N years in advance..."

"Are you excited?"

"I can't say I'm tempted...it's a lie, haha!" Sun Xiang laughed at himself, "But it's okay, I still remember why I played Glory back then."

Zhou Zekai smiled lightly.

Sun Xiang was finally a bit late-conscious, Hao Ran, he looked away as if nothing had happened: "Don't laugh at me. That's right, this small amount of money going back and forth may be just a little splash in your eyes."

"Why?" Zhou Zekai stepped forward, wanted to pass the God Destroyer in Sun Xiang's hand, touched the battle mage's spear with its wand, and seemed to protest, "You misunderstood me."

Not to be outdone, Sun Xiang took the spear to block it back, Zhou Zekai picked it up again, and for a while, the two of them were like elementary school students, "comparing" with Nendoroid figures back and forth.

Half a minute later, Sun Xiang laughed with a "poof": "Stop, stop, childish!"

Zhou Zekai also stopped, but his expression persisted: "You haven't answered my question yet."

Sun Xiang muttered: "Okay, do I have to make it so clear? The car you drove today is called S600, and it is not a new model after the merger of the production lines. No matter how you think about it, the price is more than ten times that of my little broken car." .”

The small broken car in his mouth refers to the GLC that he "ruthlessly" abandoned in Yurongzhuang. Even the purchase tax with stickers and navigation is less than 50.

"..." Zhou Zekai was silent for a while, "The car is not mine."

"Ah? It's not yours? The one your family gave is no different..." Sun Xiang emphasized, after all, they were discussing Zhou Zekai's family background, and the car was bought by himself or with his family, which will not shake the logic of Sun Xiang's argument.

"No." Zhou Zekai suddenly showed a strange expression, paused for a while, and then said as if he had made up his mind, "My money is independent from my family."

If it was anyone else, after listening to Zhou Zekai's words, the first thing they would be curious about would be the bloody plot of "excellent juniors being kicked out of the wealthy family".However, Sun Xiang's brain circuit was miraculously connected to Zhou Zekai.

He said without thinking: "I see, you mean you bought a car yourself? With the money you earned?"

"Well," Zhou Zekai said with a hint of joy hidden in his tone, "so we are the same."

"Wait," Sun Xiang thought very clearly, "Although, well, it must be more expensive than mine! Dude, why are you so modest, no matter how you say, you retired three years earlier than me!"

Zhou Zekai glanced at him speechlessly, took out his phone, tapped it a few times, and handed it to Sun Xiang: "Yes, the same."

"Oh, GLC, it's exactly the same... Damn it!" Sun Xiang finally realized what Zhou Zekai wanted to say, and his eyes widened, "The model color...the interior material and interior color...no, even the wheel hub modification All fucking like me??"

This model sells well. Generally speaking, Sun Xiang has encountered several characteristics on the road, but there must be chances of hitting all of them, but it is definitely very small. In addition to a city with tens of millions of people, Sun Xiang Never seen anything normal so far.

Now, an old colleague who hadn't seen him for five years suddenly told me that the two of them bought the car exactly the same from the timing to the configuration.

Compared to Sun Xiang, Zhou Zekai's reaction was very calm. He nodded and said, "Yes, what a coincidence."

TBC